


Pass The Carmex

by saintroux



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Idiots in Love, M/M, Miscommunication, Oral Fixation, Pining, Pittsburgh Penguins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-06-30
Packaged: 2018-11-19 06:06:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11307282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintroux/pseuds/saintroux
Summary: The team was definitely not clicking on all cylinders right now, and the last thing they needed was for Zhenya to be compromised by the unfair distraction of his own captain’s mouth.





	Pass The Carmex

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Signe_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Signe_chan/gifts).



> To signechan, for whom I started about four different plots and finally settled on this one-- boys who pine for each other and forget subsequently how to function is one of my most favorite tropes. I hope this lives up to the hype!
> 
> As well, major thanks to sevenfists for bullying this story into submission and being a one-man champion for the oxford comma.
> 
> Set roughly at the start of the 2015-2016 season. All game results mentioned herein are not accurate and were manufactured purely for narrative purposes.
> 
>  
> 
> [find me on tumblr!](http://saintroux.tumblr.com/)

\---

Zhenya suspected that he’d fallen into a particularly novice-level trap. He wasn’t really up for blaming himself, considering the circumstances. He’d woken up that morning with a killer headache, ran into way more traffic on Route 79 than he was used to or equipped to deal with in any reasonable manner, and by the time he got to the practice rink the beverage station was already squarely blockaded by Sidney trying to meticulously water down half a cup’s worth of coffee.

It wasn’t that hard to muscle Sidney to the side with a muttered, “Move-- too big,” and a hand pressed along his hip, but halfway through doctoring his morning tea-- and shaking a packet of lemon juice a little more than was probably necessary-- Sidney leaned back against the counter and started chattering at him about the Rangers’ power play. 

Twenty minutes and two trips in and out of the locker room later, he still hadn’t stopped. 

“Think Vigneault definitely hire you,” Zhenya said, blowing uselessly on his mostly tepid tea and settling against the wall next to where Sidney was lining up a fresh stick in the saw set-up. “Know you look good in red and blue.” 

Zhenya bumped his knee against Sidney’s thigh, biting a smile off with his tongue and knocking Sidney ajar from the blade position he was setting. Sidney scowled up at him. Zhenya just laughed into his mug. Maybe this was his repayment for dealing with Sidney’s idiosyncrasies this early in the morning. He would almost certainly be the last one on the ice for practice, and Kuni was probably going to rib him for not suffering through the newly-minted pre-skate vinyasa class Flower kept trying to pretend was a thing. At least he was getting to stand there and nudge Sidney just a little off his game-- watch his nose scrunch up in petulant concentration as he stared down the stick cutter like he was straddling the faceoff dot. 

“If you’re not listening you don’t have to stand there, you know,” Sidney said, the metallic hiss of the blade coming down to drown out the end of the sentence. 

“Just doing job,” Zhenya laughed, “make sure captain come practice, all fingers still there.” He wiggled his hand a little for emphasis and took another long sip of his rapidly cooling tea. The tang of the lemon made him hiss softly under his breath, and he quickly sucked his lower lip into his mouth to soothe it. Jesus, that stung.

Eventually, they settled into a rhythm of Sidney slicing stick tops and Zhenya handing him various grits of sandpaper interspersed with idle chatter about practice and Taylor’s college team and the Steelers’ promising new season. Zhenya cradled his cup close to his mouth like a prize, careful not to let Sidney’s errant fiber shavings-- the ones Zhenya kept having to brush off of the front of his track pants-- make their way inside. 

Zhenya was mostly calculating how long it would reasonably take him to put on his pads when Sidney said, “Licking it isn’t going to make it any better, Geno.” 

He choked a little, piecing the conversation together and hoping he hadn’t somehow come to in the middle of it. Sidney wasn’t especially adept at making dirty jokes that didn’t remind Zhenya of his Uncle Artyom trying desperately to be considered cool, but even someone as constant as Sidney had to surprise him sometime. Maybe the rookies were really starting to rub off on him. 

The real surprise, then, was watching Sidney balance his stick on the jig and bend down to begin shuffling through one of the lower drawers. Bent in half, Sidney’s rink sweats pulled so snug around his hips that Zhenya could see the ridge of his underwear, and he downed the rest of his tea in an attempt to _really_ not think about it. 

By the time he swallowed the last stinging drop and set the cup down on the counter, Sidney was reaching one hand out to steady Zhenya’s waist, suddenly way closer than Zhenya was prepared for. The thumb of his right hand was covered in a soft dollop of ointment, a partially empty tube of lip balm discarded near the saw.

Zhenya stood still, just this side of too exhausted to really process what his next move should be.

“Jesus, Geno-- I can’t believe you let it get this bad. Your lip is bleeding--” Sidney said, and it clicked, suddenly, that he was really just concerned about all of the citrus-related protests Zhenya had been subjecting him to. 

Zhenya probably should not have been wholly surprised that Sidney was mother-henning him about this. He’d been not so quietly pushing Zhenya towards any number of Sidney-approved solutions over the years. Apparently Zhenya’s ability to moisturize his own mouth had now also passed over that tipping point. 

“Gonna tell Dana you stealing his stash,” Zhenya said.

“I did not-- this is mine!”

“Yeah, Sid-- okay.” Zhenya raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Dana going be so mad, you start getting left skate done first now for _sure_.” 

“Would you just stay _still_!” Sidney was standing far too close and Zhenya was struck with the realization that his chirps were likely all for naught. Sidney was almost certainly the type of person to stash his own personal chapstick in every nook of the rink. Zhenya tried not to linger on it, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed Sidney’s mouth was always just this side of well-kept-- lush and red, the centerpiece of an over-proportioned face. He wasn’t blind. 

In front of him, Sidney looked weirdly determined, his wide mouth pinched into a clean, thin line. If history was any indicator, Zhenya probably should have feared more at the sight of that look-- the same one he got when they were down a goal in the third and Sidney was rushing over the boards. He probably should have done a lot of things, like backed out from the loose hold of Sidney’s hand on his shirt instead of standing frozen as Sidney reached up to swipe the thumb-full of chapstick across his still open mouth. 

Sidney’s thumb against his lip was warm and quick, the ghost of the touch crackling in its wake. The last time someone had truly paid that much attention to his mouth had been Oksana-- his head between her legs and her thumb pressing firmly in the center of his swollen lower lip like a blessing. 

Sidney’s touch felt just as reverent, and as Zhenya felt his lips going tacky he sucked them both into his mouth until the spread of it cooled the sting. 

Up close, he could see Sidney’s eyes tracking him, mouth-breathing and a little dazed. Zhenya was beginning to feel a sliver of claustrophobia under the attention, and he smacked his lips back open noisily, startling Sidney’s fingers from where they were resting still against Zhenya’s jaw.

“Oh, I--” Sidney didn’t really shift away but he ducked his head just enough that the ruddy spread of his cheeks and nose obscured his frown. Zhenya could see him calculating the path of his mistake, retracing the cause and effect like he could rewrite it somehow, but there was nothing really to be done. Zhenya was hooked, even if Sidney was going to spend the entire scope of the immediate future trying to decide whether he should drop the line.

\---

After the incident in the equipment room, Zhenya spent the remainder of the week in a state of terrible distraction. It was as if suddenly every activity that had seemed so bland and innocuous before was now littered with excuses for Zhenya to fixate on Sidney’s mouth.

During the game against the Wild, Zhenya almost took a shift change early-- miscued entirely by Sidney yapping down the bench about a flubbed penalty on the last play. Horny looked at him with a look of mild panic as he touched one skate down over the edge of the boards, and he nearly fell into Tanger trying to scramble back over before the ref noticed his momentary idiocy and called a too-many-men. 

“Trying to take me out, G?” Tanger shouted, not shifting over at all to give Zhenya his spot back. It had left him standing awkwardly with his ass half resting on the boards, so he covered it up with a particularly purposeful drink of water, squirting it twice down the back of his jersey in an attempt to chill his skittering breath. 

Johnston pulled him aside for it during the second intermission, slapping him roughly on the back with some platitude about getting his head in the game. The momentary shame at being singled out didn’t really stop him from peering past his shoulder at where Sidney was slumped back in his stall, hair curling in sweaty peaks and his mouth open in an exhausted ‘o.’ His knees were spread so wide, feet boneless in his skates, and Zhenya felt a stupid urge to just plant himself between them until it was time for Sidney to lift him off the floor and back to the ice. 

During the weekend roadtrip, the game against Carolina left them with a fairly unsuitable kitchen, tiny and cramped even with just a few people bustling through. Zhenya ended up sitting on the floor of the locker room while Sidney chewed noisily at his pre-game PB&J, lips smacking and pink. He was using the seat of his stall like a makeshift table, slathering each half of bread with toppings, brushing the crumbs off into his hand and then depositing them back into the center of the whole mess. All told, Zhenya should probably have found it revolting; instead he was fixed on the smear of jelly clinging to the corner of Sidney’s upper lip. 

Sidney was leaning to the side to chirp half-hearted insults over at Flower while he was trying to put on his pads, giggling through every third try and entirely oblivious to the strawberry smudge. Zhenya spun a roll of tape around and around his wrist, trying not to think about how much he wanted to reach out and brush the mess back across Sidney’s lips, how much he wanted to follow it up with his mouth. 

In his mind, Sidney’s mouth would be soft like it looked and Zhenya would curl twitching fingers around the back of his hair, hold him in place and taste fruit on his tongue. He knew that, no matter how much he might yield under the touch, Sidney would fight him for every inch. Nothing sounded more appealing. 

Instead, Zhenya stood from his stall and tossed the tape roll lazily across the room until it bounced off of Sidney’s thigh. “Not going get people stop call you Kid if face such mess,” he said. 

Sidney’s head snapped over from where he was still chattering after Flower. He shoved a far-too-big final bite of sandwich in his mouth and said, garbled, “Ha ha.” He looked thoroughly unimpressed; Zhenya loved it. 

“Maybe I take picture,” Zhenya half shouted, smirking sloppily and raising his phone as a weapon on his way back out the locker room door. “Twitter looking empty!” 

Zhenya slipped through the chaos of the pregame hallway, following the sound of two-touch to the loading dock and proud of this newfound display of restraint. The team was definitely not clicking on all cylinders right now and the last thing they needed was for Zhenya to be compromised by the unfair distraction of his own captain’s mouth.

\---

Of course, Sidney really only served to make things worse for him with his now seemingly unending mission to help Zhenya deal with what he had rudely dubbed his “lip problem.”

Zhenya wasn’t entirely certain that Dana _hadn’t_ always kept extra Blistex in the bench bags, but now it seemed like Sidney was making a point to remind him at every turn, flipping one at him during practice or trying to nudge him to use it during a particularly tense game. It wasn’t like Zhenya didn’t know that he chewed his lips to a bloody pulp when they were down in a game-- and it seemed like they were down far too much lately for his liking-- it was just that no one had ever really complained. A cracked lip wasn’t going to get him put on the injured reserve anytime soon. 

None of that really deterred Sidney. 

“You really should borrow some of this,” Sidney said to him from the bench one day, pausing to look up from where he had just finished tightening the laces on his pants. He had an uncapped tube in his hand and he touched it to his mouth, dragging it across his lower lip in languid swipes. It made his lip look like butter and Zhenya wanted to scream a little at his own misfortune. 

Thankfully, Bones chose that moment to come walking through the tunnel. “Nobody wants to swap spit, Sid!” he yelled as he barreled his way past the bench door. 

Zhenya tried to hide his laughter in the palm of his glove, but the set of Sid’s unimpressed brow was way too much for him to deal with this early in the morning, so he flicked his stick a couple times against the boards and hightailed it across the ice. 

Sidney caught him as he was leaving for the locker room after practice, fingers hooked in the sleeve of Zhenya’s jersey. 

“Stay out?” he said, face open and dotted with sweat. “I was gonna practice shots for a while.”

Zhenya relented because he was, at the core, a fairly weak man. He and Sidney posted up near one end of the rink, backhanding a bucket of pucks into the net in alternate turns. Right now it was Zhenya’s turn to play pass back-- shifting from skate to skate at the side of the net, watching the puck move from stick to stick to twine. 

He forgot, sometimes, how relaxing hockey could be-- how much he was really just an overgrown kid playing his very favorite game. Not that Sidney was treating this shot practice as such. His brow was furled up in concentration as he received two sharp passes in a row-- stick-handling one back and forth between his legs and slapping the other straight at the net. It hit high, just under the bar, and Sidney’s halfhearted smile made Zhenya want to walk over and smooth those tense lines all away with just a momentary press of his thumb. 

“I don’t know how it doesn’t bother you,” Sidney piped up in the middle of another shot. “Rink air is so dry all the time--”

Zhenya couldn’t believe that even hockey couldn’t distract Sidney from this. “They fine, Sid.”

“I’m just saying, you really should consider investing in better-- it’s gonna be snowing soon! Do you know how brutal winter is in Pittsburgh?” Sidney’s eyebrows had made it about up to his hairline. Zhenya threw him another hard pass and he fanned on it. 

“No, Sid,” he said. “So much surprise-- not know about place I’m live many years now. Seasons-- mystery!”

Riling Sidney up was always fun, but this payback tasted especially sweet after the way the morning’s drills had gone. Zhenya had lost all but one of his faceoffs, so distracted by the look of fierce concentration on Sidney’s face-- the smudge of his eyelashes shading his eyes, the thick curve of his tongue along the edge of his mouth. 

He had spent the remainder of the time trying desperately to get kicked out of the dot. Let Kuni take the draws for once; there were two alternates for a reason. 

Now, Sidney swatted a wrist shot straight at Zhenya’s legs. “You think you’re so funny-- switch me.” They switched off-- Zhenya to the right circle and Sidney curling around the back of the net to where the pucks were stashed. As they crossed, Zhenya reached back with his stick and hooked Sidney square around the waist, laughing mercilessly as Sidney startled. For his part, Sidney was trying valiantly to stride through it as though it were just a phantom touch. 

“Am so funny,” Zhenya said, sure of himself as he slid into position, adjusting his skates just so. When he looked up, Sidney was dropping a few pucks at his feet, but the flushed cheeks and small quirk of a smile Zhenya spotted on his face gave him squarely away.

\---

“Nice of you to join us,” Tanger said, propping himself up on the back of the headrest as Zhenya slid into his seat. “I was petitioning to make you walk there yourself-- coach didn’t bite.”

He was admittedly rather late to the bus. Somehow he’d managed to sleep through both of his nap alarms and in his haste to throw his backpack together had forgotten his cell phone on the bed. By the time he’d gone back up to retrieve it, he landed himself in the elevator with a group of kids who _definitely_ recognized him. 

It wasn’t as if he could say no. He ended up signing three backpacks and a Batman logo by the time it was all said and done, and when the elevator reached lobby level, their skittering questions followed him all the way out the door. 

His teammates could just deal; besides that, this was just his way. Zhenya wasn’t entirely sure why anyone expected him to be on time to something he’d been consistently late to for eight years. 

“Not hearing you, Tanger,” he said, rifling through the front section of his backpack and pulling out his headphones. They were large and obnoxious, a perfect way to ensure that no one would bother him. “You old, jokes old.”

Zhenya didn’t even turn on the music, content to just slip his shoes half off and watch Buffalo’s empty storefronts pass him by outside the window. When they reached First Niagara, Zhenya spent a good few minutes wrestling with the heel of his left shoe-- trying to avoid having to bend down into the crevice of his seat to actually untie it-- and once he got it back on, nearly all of the guys had filed off. 

Only Sidney was left-- typing away at his tablet with his mouth pursed tight and his nose scrunched up in frustration. 

“Playing game from bus?” Zhenya called up to him. “Maybe you get scratch, I play first line.” 

Sidney didn’t even look up. “Sure, Geno-- first line in your dreams.”

His phrasing was honestly so lame that it physically pained Zhenya not to retort, and he patted himself on the back for the extra effort it took to abstain. Instead, he shouldered his bag, shifting around in his pockets for his wallet and habitually checking again in the overhead in case he’d missed anything. He hadn’t-- except for a small cardboard package lying on the seat where his backpack had been. 

He turned it over in his hand-- a three pack of chapsticks with a jaunty candy cane stripe. Part of him really hoped this was a regift from Sidney’s Christmas stocking-- anything reasonable to explain why Sidney had now graduated to buying him unwanted gifts in his offtime. 

Maybe someone else had left it there by accident. Or maybe Tanger had thought it an especially funny prank. It wasn’t terribly unlikely; Zhenya had seen him lifting a suspicious eyebrow on the bench every time Sidney offered to share. At any rate, it wasn’t as though Sidney was about to give him a straight answer if Zhenya brought it up. His eyes were creased at the corners, mouth still tense and typing away. 

Zhenya pocketed the package until his pre-game session with Jen a few nights later, where he flipped it into her hand in what he felt was a pretty strong bribe. He was perceptive enough to remember the monster-sized pump bottle of peppermint hand lotion on her desk back at Consol; there was no way this could fail. 

“You’re not getting out of your scrum tonight, Geno,” she scolded, sliding the pack into the deep abyss of her puse. “But thank you for trying.”

Zhenya scowled. He really was hoping to reap some reward. 

The “reward” came to him the next week, this time in the form of a reasonably large jar of medicated lip balm thrown on top of the stack of compression shorts in his stall. The rest of his teammates were bustling around him-- clipping pads on and taping up sticks and ribbing each other. Over the rumble of the room, he cleared his throat and shouted, “Whose mess? Whoever not cleaning up my locker get huge fine.”

Zhenya futzed with the pile a bit for emphasis, but no one spared him so much as a blink-- the room a continued haze of laughter and stick slaps and Dumo’s horrendous pregame playlist. Clearly he’d gotten too soft-- he was going to have to make a point to loom over the rookies with a lot more frequency if this was how they treated his attempts to collect. 

He crowed a request for a fifty from Phil as he sauntered past, but Phil just gave him a thick smack on the shoulder and a brusquely stated, “Not cleaning up your mess, man-- already doing it enough on the ice!”

It was patently untrue; Zhenya laughed anyway. 

Zhenya wondered, not for the first time, if maybe this was all some sort of extended game of foreplay. Had Sidney’s hand lingered a little longer on his chin that day in the equipment room, or had Zhenya had the peace of mind to step forward just that extra inch, maybe he’d be chasing the taste of menthol from Sidney’s mouth, closed up in the change room after warmups and trying not to get hard in his game pants. 

Maybe he would go down to his knees, hands gently bracketing Sidney’s hips; he could think of quite a few things he could try to silence Sidney’s stubborn criticisms, to make his chest and thighs and that unwavering soft spot around his hips pink up to match.

Here, Sidney sat just a few stalls away looking perfectly stoic-- a statue of his well-documented pregame routine. Zhenya was almost infuriated by how it contrasted with the excess of Sidney’s recent efforts-- as if he hadn’t been sneaking Zhenya unwanted gifts all week and driving him to insanity, or longing, or both.

\---

Zhenya was ultimately so thrown off by the whole thing that the standing lunch date he and Sidney had in Montreal nearly passed him by unnoticed. It wasn’t until Sidney was standing in front of his stall after morning skate, dressed again in street clothes and hair curling dry, that it even crossed his mind.

“You ready?” Sidney asked, shoving his wallet back into the pocket of his coat. Zhenya clearly was not. He still had a towel around his waist, chest and shoulders blotchy and red from the shower’s heat. Horny had been trying to talk over a power play drill with him since he’d gotten out, and it had prevented him from making any strides towards leaving that didn’t involve a vague attempt to shake dry his hair. 

“Give me--” Zhenya scrubbed at his face, trying to parse the list of what he still needed to do. “Need five, okay?”

It took him ten. He found Sidney outside the freight entrance, watching game footage on his phone. The ends of his hair were curling softly around the brim of his hat, and Zhenya was struck with a strong urge to flip the offending thing off his head and sink his fingers in.

Their walk to lunch was peppered mainly with talk of the night’s game. Zhenya knew full well his own strengths against Montreal, but spending time with Sidney always centered around entertaining his need to idly dissect hockey in nearly every way. Zhenya was happy to indulge. 

Once they arrived, Sidney let him deliberate over the menu on his own. At this point, Zhenya could probably recite it by heart, and he ordered one of the only two things he ever did, fumbling over a quick “Merci” to their server as she left. Zhenya might one day admit that he shared some of the same fondness for routine that Sidney did, but today was not that day. 

“I don’t know why you make fun of me when you order beets every time,” Sidney chastised, nudging at him where their knees were crowded together under the table. Zhenya stared at the way his smile quirked up on one side and hoped it wasn’t too obvious. It had been a while since he and Sidney spent much time together without the team buzzing around. He wasn’t terribly surprised to find that his fixation remained. 

The rest of their meal passed in much the same way, Sidney chattering through a bevy of hockey-adjacent topics: power play, a new trick shot, whether Zhenya thought that the new yoga section that had been added to their training routine was really helping him. Zhenya tried to eat his food at a relatively human pace, but the consistent distraction of Sidney’s mouth rounding out vowels and blowing pursed over his mug of tea did nothing but slow him down. 

At one point, Zhenya nearly missed guiding his fork into his mouth, stabbing himself in the chin instead while trying clumsily to cover it up. The diners around them didn’t so much as blink, carrying on the low hum of French conversation. Zhenya was not so entirely lucky. 

“You okay, there?” Sidney asked through a laugh, smacking at his own chest a bit when it veered into choking. Zhenya tried not to feel sympathy; Sidney _had_ been driving him slowly crazy. 

It was the first time they’d been alone in weeks and Sidney had yet to bring up anything even remotely concerning the helicopter operation that he’d been running on Zhenya’s lips. Zhenya should probably have just taken it as a blessing-- maybe Sidney had simply given up, aware that Zhenya was a reasonably-grown adult who had survived this far without some type of terrible disaster erupting from his lackluster sense of self-care. 

But Sidney was nothing if not predictable. He didn’t make a habit of giving up, and Zhenya didn’t make much of a habit of letting things lie-- especially when they’d driven him to this level of bubbling frustration. 

“I know you haven’t been using them,” Sidney said. They were on their way back downtown-- walking up Rue Guy with Zhenya pointing out amusingly named shops as they went. “Michelle was using one of the peppermint ones last week during my scrum-- and you still have a crack in your lip.”

Zhenya sighed. He had known, objectively, that Sidney wasn’t done with the whole thing, but he felt boxed in by the confrontation all the same. As much as he was sometimes pleased at his newfound urge to push Sidney into the rink door and warm their mouths together, the Sidney side of the equation remained just as much a puzzle as it ever had. 

“Maybe lip just like this, just dry--” Zhenya pulled his own lip between two fingers for emphasis. “Why you care? No one care-- hockey still fine, Sid.”

“I’m just trying to _help _, Geno.” Sidney’s voice was peppered with a hint of a whine, like Zhenya was a linesman and Sidney was about to start defending a teammate’s probable mistake. “I’ve seen it bleed-- it has to be distracting.”__

__“ _You_ distracting,” Zhenya said, incensed that he had to keep repeating this. “So many times I tell you ‘Sid-- I fine, is my mouth’ but you not listening!”_ _

__“I--” Sidney piped up, but Zhenya continued, cheeks boiling despite the winter chill._ _

__“No! Just because you always-- lips always so soft, so much shine,” he said, words tumbling out recklessly like ice cracking off of a porch roof. “Just because my lips bad-- bossy captain don’t need care! Hockey _fine_!” _ _

__The pause that followed felt stale in the cold November air, and Zhenya tried valiantly to focus instead on the crunch of leftover snow beneath their feet. They carried on like that for a block or two, weaving easily through sidewalk crowds until Sidney visibly unwound, seemingly pleased at their level of anonymity. Zhenya hoped that maybe they’d just walk the rest of the route to the hotel like this, quiet and easy. Zhenya could pretend he was relaxed. Maybe Sidney would just let it go._ _

__He didn’t let it go. “You think my mouth is nice,” Sidney said, like his brain couldn’t quite wrap itself around the words, still testing the shape of them. Zhenya looked aside at him; his hands were gathered into fists in the pockets of his jacket, profile a familiarly sharp line._ _

__Zhenya wasn’t sure what he was supposed to say to that. Should he admit it? What he’d already said was admission enough. Sidney didn’t sound especially angry about it, didn’t sound much of anything, really, his voice soft and measured. Zhenya felt like one of the media crew trying to decipher another carefully non-controversial post game soundbite, trying to read into it a level of human irritation that he wasn’t sure was even there._ _

__The ball was firmly in Sidney’s court, but even that would never deter Zhenya from smothering a mishap with a well placed joke._ _

__“You dreaming, Sid,” Zhenya said, trying to keep his smile wry and his tone as judgemental as he could manage. “Thinking chapstick scent getting your head.” He nudged Sidney a little with his hip, a perfect mirror of a move he always pulled in practice, and strode ahead, long steps quickly eclipsing Sidney’s._ _

__“C’mon, Sid!” Zhenya called, barreling past crowd and conversation in a single turn. “Too slow-- don’t be late to nap!”_ _

____

\---

Foolishly, Zhenya had hoped that that might be the end of it, that maybe he’d created enough friction with his admittance that Sidney might just go back to his regular schedule of confrontational avoidance. Maybe his own fixation would fade if he gave it enough time.

Instead, Sidney was just _looking_ at him, so much that it sometimes felt like no one had ever looked at him before. Zhenya kept catching him-- his eyes boring holes into Zhenya on the bench, in the trainer’s office, across their floor of the staff parking deck. 

Zhenya was folded up on the couch in the lounge one day before skate, catching up with his mother in hushed tones, when he looked up to find Sidney peering at him from the armchair opposite, his eyes dark over the edge of his tablet. Even as he was caught, Sidney barely moved, only averting his gaze when Zhenya over-exaggerated a yawn and waved, as if before that there had been some level of plausible deniability. 

“Everything is ready, mama,” Zhenya kept repeating, trying to assuage his mother that her and his father’s upcoming trip to the States would go off without so much as a hitch. He wasn’t sure why she was still so dubious about it after all these years-- he was a grown adult, long out from under his parents’ thumb. 

Even when his mother bid him goodbye with a soft, “Take care of yourself, Zhenechka,” Zhenya could feel Sidney’s eyes on him. Zhenya wasn’t sure that anyone had ever paid him this much uninterrupted attention and, when he thought about it, it made him feel a little stripped. 

He made the mistake on the road a few nights later of accepting a post-game dinner invitation from Tanger without thinking. 

The game had been exhilarating-- sixty minutes of up and down hockey, everyone exhausted and flying afterward. He and Sidney had connected for two slick goals on the power play in the second, and after the stupid fight he’d gotten into in the waning minutes of the third, he was still bubbling over with pent up energy, his body taut like a pulled rubber band. 

By the time he checked in with Dana about an issue he’d been having with one of his skates and actually made it to the place, dinner had mostly turned into drinks. Zhenya’s stomach growled unhappily at the prospect. He’d have to start targeting who to convince to split room service with him later, if he was even still on his feet.

He was rarely in attendance for a celebratory bar crawl anymore, Sidney even less so. Yet when Tanger led him to their tables in the back, there was Sidney at the center of it all, holding court over a rapt group of rookies. 

Zhenya shoved his way into the booth with his ass and a grumbled, “Move, move-- alternate captain needs room,” until everyone shuffled around to include him. From across the table, Sidney caught his eye, his face open and expressive where it was left unobscured by a backwards hat. Zhenya felt alight at the curiosity he saw there.

He spent the rest of the night wondering if Sidney might actually do something more than just stare at him like he was trying to weigh the pros and cons, if he might finally make some use of this month-long game of tag. When Zhenya got up to settle his tab with the bartender, Sidney slipped out after him, muscling past him to the men’s room with a hand anchoring Zhenya’s hips. 

At the bar, Zhenya thought for a second that it might be some sort of miscommunicated invitation. Was Zhenya meant to follow him? Would Sidney come out of the stall as he was running his hands under the sink and anchor his hips there instead, put his drink-wet mouth on Zhenya’s neck and suck until it bruised? It wasn’t like him to think of Sidney as predatory, but the idea of it burned him up all the same. 

Whatever he had been imagining was quickly squashed when Sidney appeared again at his side, eyes bright with the amount of beer he’d had and fingers resting hot in the crook of Zhenya’s arm. 

“You going?” Sidney asked, and Zhenya wasn’t even sure if he sounded sad or relieved, but the moment was lost, Zhenya’s confidence evaporated. 

“Yeah--” he said, raising one shoulder in a showy shrug. Sidney’s eyes tracked it the whole way, and in the blue light of the bar, Zhenya couldn’t tell if the flush coloring Sidney’s cheeks was from drink or embarrassment. “Tired, need food.”

Sidney didn’t seem to want to argue with him, and he gave Zhenya a few lingering pats to his arm as he turned back to where the team awaited. Zhenya, for his part, was left standing heavy from the weight of the touch, and it took all of his focus to type the hotel’s address into his rideshare app and not look ahead to Sidney’s retreating form.

\---

Whatever confidence had deflated in him at the bar that night came roaring back in practice a few days later. He and Sidney were centering the two squads, and no matter how many times Zhenya tried to keep the play continuous, they kept resetting for a draw.

So far, Zhenya had won all of them. 

It felt a little odd. Sidney was clearly off his game-- face tense and eyes hard-- projecting confidence like it might eventually be true. Midway through one of the draws, Zhenya looked through his visor and saw the tight creases of frustration gathering at the corners of Sidney’s mouth. He wanted to reach out and press them gently away, so he reached out with his stick and snapped the puck back instead. 

Each loss only seemed to make Sidney more determined, and by the end of the session he’d chased Zhenya around practically the whole rink, their legs and skates tangled up at every interval. 

“You’re too fucking big to beat me,” Sidney said to him after he won the final board battle. Even with Zhenya draped all over him, he’d barely ever lost control of the puck, fighting for it between his skates as if it was the last five of a tied game seven. 

The barb was weak, but it dripped with a kind of competitive malice that set Zhenya’s skin on fire, felt sharp and confrontational. He wasn’t surprised, really, when Sidney skated up to him again after most of the team was long gone, and the few who were left were just gathering pucks together. Zhenya was standing by the bench with his gloves under his arm, rubbing splashes of water onto his neck in an attempt to cool it off. 

“I need you to practice faceoffs with me,” Sidney said, quick and direct as if it would prevent Zhenya from saying no. 

“We just do faceoff, Sid,” Zhenya said. “Coach make us do so many I can’t even count.” 

Sidney gave him a look that could only be described as petulant. “Your percentage is hovering around 40 right now-- do you really think you couldn’t use more practice?”

Zhenya arched an eyebrow at him, unimpressed. It was so like Sidney to keep up with something like his faceoff stats, although-- in the face of how lackluster they were-- he wasn’t sure whether he should be irritated or grateful. 

“Like yours any better,” Zhenya said, fighting back the only way he knew how. It was weak-- and terribly untrue-- but Zhenya could do little to resist slicing at Sidney from time to time. He knew better than to think it would deter Sidney entirely, but maybe he would let his irritation talk him into some sense of mercy. Zhenya’s legs were _tired_ ; he wasn’t getting any younger. 

Sidney looked for a moment like he was going to respond, but he turned on his heel and skated away instead, taking two quick laps around. 

Zhenya took the moment to call to Beau, who was over talking with one of the training staff. “Sunshine--” he said, nudging his head in Sidney’s direction when he got Beau’s attention. “Need help, you still owing me from last week.”

Beau skated over easily, a hint of apprehension coloring his face. It had become increasingly clear to Zhenya that Beau was at least a little bit afraid of him, which, quite honestly, was fine. He could keep it that way.

“C’mon!” Sidney said, calling over to them impatiently from the far circle. “I’ll prove it to you.”

Sidney did no such thing. If anything, he was more flustered, winning at most five over the course of the next half hour. As they began nearing the end, Sidney started cheating his way through so many draws that Zhenya knew he was trying to win one last one and call it quits. A typical Sidney desperation move-- anything and everything to not have to call the session a total wash. 

Zhenya wanted to laugh, and he only kind of succeeded at suppressing it. If the way that Beau started snickering a bit himself was any indication, he hadn’t done a very good job.

“Ridiculous!” Zhenya said, continuing to snort softly as he watched Sidney toe his skates over the line yet again. “You going kill yourself in practice, get on IR-- going sit in box so mad, watch me score so many times.” 

Sidney just looked at him, tired eyes trying for sharp and mostly failing. “Just take this draw, G,” he said, “c’mon.” He nudged none too kindly at Beau’s elbow a few times in a wordless attempt to speed up the drop of the puck. Beau just eyed him, brow raised like he really would rather not be dealing with this at all, but was too exhausted to do much but comply.

Sidney’s voice was almost pleading, and Zhenya knew the feeling, knew that they both had played much better hockey than this year’s stats showed. So Zhenya took the draw, looking Sidney in the eye and weak-wristing his stick hand to assure that Sidney could snap the puck easily back through his skates. 

Zhenya chased after him when he took the puck to the boards, slamming him against them in some facsimile of celebration, stick clattering to the ice. If a victorious outcome was what Sidney wanted from this, Zhenya would gladly give it-- if only for the sake of his aching legs. 

“I know you let me win that,” Sidney said, wiggling out from where Zhenya’s arm was patting him lazily. “C’mon, we need to keep--”

Zhenya had had enough, and he waved a free hand back to where Beau was leaning lazily against the boards, hoping he’d interpret the gesture as a sign to go home. Zhenya’s body sighed with relief at the sound of skates retreating; even Sidney couldn’t be insane enough to try to figure out a way to drop the puck to himself. 

“No, Sid--” Zhenya said, and locked his arms around Sidney’s waist like he was corralling a particularly sly child. Sidney’s body stiffened, awkwardly held like he wasn’t quite sure how to react. Zhenya just shuffled him further, gliding them across the ice as a unit even in the face of Sidney’s numerous protestations. 

The second their skates touched the floor of the tunnel, Sidney wrestled himself from Zhenya’s hold, gathered his extra sticks from where they lay against the glass, and tottered off down the hall. He didn’t offer so much as a word to Zhenya, waddling off with a sense of crisp purpose that Zhenya could only assume meant he’d likely spend a good portion of the next hour trying to ride the bike into the ground. 

Zhenya just watched him go, content to sit and unlace his skates at the bench, meticulously unknotting and loosening each row. It took him so long that by the time he was done and padding to the locker room in wet-socked feet, the lights in the conjoined hallways were mostly dimmed, only the sound of a floor buffer humming in the distance. 

In the locker room, Sidney’s bag was sitting open on the seat of his stall, his base layers hanging damp over the sides. Zhenya stripped off his own gear with practised ease, ripping the tape off his socks and stuffing his pads in their cubby. After he was down to just his compression shorts, he thunked to the seat, fishing his phone out of his backpack to leaf through his schedule.

He read his way through the entirety of the next day’s media plans-- as well as two articles on KHL player reimbursement that he’d gotten from Seryozha-- by the time Sidney walked in. 

Zhenya looked up at the familiar squeak of Sidney’s sandals and nearly choked. Sidney was still wet from the shower, bare to the waist and clutching a towel loosely around his hips. Every inch of skin that Zhenya could see was blotchy and pink as if he’d been standing under the spray for hours. Nothing seemed more appealing to Zhenya than just reaching out to touch.

The awkward silence left by Zhenya’s lecherous eye had clearly caught on. Sidney walked straight to his stall without a word, shoulders tense like maybe he’d expected to be alone. He started rifling through his bag with what looked like very little purpose beyond buying time, but it gave Zhenya the impression that maybe leaving Sidney alone was exactly what he should do.

Zhenya’s own bag was open on the floor at his feet and mostly full, so he tucked his phone back inside and stood up to grab the roll of kinesio tape he’d left hanging behind his chest protector. Sidney, for his part, was hunched still over his seat, thumbing silently at his phone and shifting his weight back and forth from foot to foot. He looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin, but if he didn’t want to offer so much as a greeting, Zhenya doubted that he’d succeed in getting Sidney to talk about it.

It wasn’t until Zhenya was about to walk out the door to the change room, backpack slung over one arm and sandals cradled in the other, that Sidney spoke.

“Um, Geno?” Sidney said into the silence.

Zhenya turned back. Sidney’s eyes were imploring, as big as Zhenya had ever seen them, but his posture screamed tentative. 

“You decide not being mad to me anymore?” Zhenya said. “I leaving-- so convenient.” He kind of hoped it would sting. 

From the wounded look Sidney shot at him, the words had had their desired effect. 

“I wasn’t--” Sidney started, and then paused. “C’mon, you know I’m not _mad_ at you.”

After the absolute whipping Zhenya had given him during practice, he sorely doubted that, but he was willing to indulge. 

“Not mad, but treating quiet,” Zhenya said, and god, why couldn’t he think of the word. “Giving me so much--”

“Silent treatment,” Sidney filled in for him. “And I’m not giving you-- you’re just--” 

Zhenya stepped towards him and from up close he could see that even speaking aloud felt like pulling teeth, Sidney’s knuckles ghost white where they clutched the towel. 

“Just what?” Zhenya asked. 

“Just--” Sidney said, “you’re just such a distraction right now, okay?” 

Zhenya stilled, frozen and a little struck. Sidney was drawn up so tight that all Zhenya wanted to do was rub his hands into the strained muscles of his neck until Sidney eased up and moaned. 

All Zhenya could do was look at him, the high flush coloring his cheekbones, the damp curl of dark hair around his ears. Sometimes he thought it was insane how someone he’d considered so familiar to him, a body he’d watched move so many times, could so easily seem so new. 

“You are,” Sidney pressed when Zhenya offered no response. “Ever since you-- why did you have to tell me that? Clearly it isn’t affecting _your_ play, but--”

The room suddenly felt tight, like all of the air had been sucked out. Zhenya knew, he _knew_ what Sidney was implying, but it wasn’t his play to make. His hands shook in anticipation of the phantom touch, fingers twitching in an attempt to mirror the shape of Sidney’s jaw. 

“I’m best, Sid,” Zhenya said with a smile. “You know this-- not sure why you so--” Which was patently false; it wasn’t as if he _hadn’t_ been hyper-aware of the oddities that had inserted themselves into Sidney’s behavior. But Zhenya was committed.

“You said you like my _mouth_ ,” Sidney said, the end word swallowed almost entirely in a rounded out whisper, like he thought the walls might store the secret for a less convenient time.

“Yes,” Zhenya said. It was true. Sidney’s mouth had always been a highlight-- wide and effusive, a source of laughter that made Zhenya double over in delight. Even if he’d _really_ taken notice only recently, it wasn’t as if the state of it really amounted to anything new. 

When Zhenya looked at Sidney, _really_ looked at him, Sidney’s eyes were raised in challenge. It made Zhenya want to sweat, made him wish he’d been quicker to make it to the change room and into his pants. As it was he was feeling helplessly exposed. 

It was fitting, then, that Sidney’s gaze felt like it was cutting through him. Zhenya dropped a hand, his bag slipping from his shoulder down to thunk against his wrist. Sidney stepped brashly closer.

“Tell me if this is--” Sidney said, hand reaching up to steady itself against Zhenya’s chin, thumb pressing like a ghost against Zhenya’s bottom lip. Zhenya felt caught; he barely remembered to take a breath.

The kiss, when it came, was snug and all-encompassing. Zhenya convinced himself he couldn’t move, hands tight to his sides like Sidney might disappear at any moment, like he had dreamed it all. 

It was odd to compare the Sidney in front of him-- the one whose tongue was warm and nose was cold against his cheek-- to the Sidney he’d been piecing together in his head. In his head, Sidney would kiss him like he was a puzzle to be solved, some code to be cracked. Here, Sidney was direct. He slotted their mouths together like he was laughing, toothy and demanding. 

Zhenya felt aloft at the difference. He wanted to fit his hands around Sidney’s bare waist, wanted to pull him so close he’d be able to feel the rasp of terry cloth on his skin. 

Instead, he nipped his teeth at Sidney’s plumped-up lower lip, tasting the familiar slick of spearmint. 

“Mouth always so sweet,” Zhenya said, pulling back to consider him for a moment. Sidney’s teeth shone bright in the gap of his open mouth, and Zhenya couldn’t resist pressing his thumb to them, dragging it down until he was cupping loosely at Sidney’s chin.

It was like a mirror of what Sidney had done to him, and Zhenya’s mouth felt parched at the sense memory of Sidney’s own thumb swiping sticky against his lip. He ran his tongue quickly over it, a nervous tic. 

“Sure I’m okay for kiss?” Zhenya asked, smile quirking up on one side. “Lips not dry, you know?”

“You’re awful,” Sidney said, and ducked his head like he couldn’t quite believe he’d been so bold. His eyelashes fanned dark over flushed pink cheeks and Zhenya reached up to run his thumb along them, along his cheekbones and up into his hair. 

“Awful,” Zhenya repeated. He felt like he couldn’t stop the force of his own smile, and he didn’t want to, wanted to touch it to Sidney’s crooked grin instead. “I’m just make up for you. So many weeks, so much tease--”

“I did _not_ ,” Sidney said, his tone as indignant as ever. “I was just trying to--”

Zhenya loved to see Sidney worked up and flushed all over. It made him want to follow the trail of it until it disappeared. Instead, Zhenya just cut him off, saying, “Yes, try to help-- maybe next time you help different way, you know?” 

He stared openly at Sidney’s slackly parted lips, his intentions so clear that even Sidney couldn’t mistake them. Sidney’s eyes were dark on Zhenya’s own face-- challenging him-- and when Zhenya picked his gaze up to meet them, he got such a rush that he nearly missed Sidney’s fingers curling loosely around the meat of his hips. 

“C’mere,” Sidney said.

Zhenya went.


End file.
